


Thawing: a study in dance

by qanterqueen



Series: Thawing [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Dancing, anyway here you go, its just them being happy in the astral plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 00:49:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13376598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qanterqueen/pseuds/qanterqueen
Summary: It had been centuries since Kravitz danced, which was really baffling, even to him.Something set post-Thawing. You can read this without having read Thawing, though!





	Thawing: a study in dance

**Author's Note:**

> Throw on your favorite face-paced swing song and _let's get going._

It had been centuries since Kravitz danced, which was really baffling, even to him.

Every night of his life-- save for the many nights leading up to his death-- he had gone out in his best clothing with his friends, those faceless gentlemen, and had gone dancing with the folks of the town. He’d drink and sweat and laugh until his bones ached and his shirt came unbuttoned-- and then he’d do it some more. It was a nightly routine since he was young enough to drink.

He stopped dancing after he died officially. In that bleak year before his life he would go out in a haze and attempt to gain the feeling he had lost, but after he died he simply gave up on the idea.

He hadn’t even tried, not once. Maybe that was his first mistake.

His second mistake was, even after _marrying_  Taako, forgetting to ask him to dance.

He only remembered after _fifty years_  and Julia Burnsides.

It was a sweltering evening in the Astral Plane but she wanted it that way-- she needed six hours of heat per day for her plants to grow, she _insisted_. Kravitz reminded her many, many times that her plants technically didn’t need anything because they didn’t _exist_. She’d only laugh at that.

Maybe it was something about replicating being alive. Maybe it was something about seeing Magnus become so hot he needed to take his shirt off.  

(The latter, of course, being the only excuse she ever gave him.)

Whatever the reason was, it left the four of them (save for Kravitz, though if he could have he would have) sweating, through all they were doing was sitting in the living room and playing cards. Taako and Magnus had already removed two layers of theirs and were down to tank tops. Kravitz kept his suit on, unable to feel the heat, and Julia had kept her entire ensemble on-- her long, beautiful and colorful skirt and her long-sleeve blouse-- out of pure strength and resilience.

“Kravitz, if you throw the Queen on me, I’m gonna get a divorce.” Taako says absently, placing a six of clubs on top of Julia’s five. The three hours they’d been playing and the ten hearts Taako had already collected were weighing heavily on his mind, apparently. 

“I don’t have it.” He responds, throwing down a three.

All eyes go directly to Julia. 

She looks over her hand with wide, innocent eyes. “Like… like _this_  Queen?”

Taako slams his hand down on the table, standing with a rage on his face like no other. “ _I want a divorce!_ ”

“Sit down, twink.” Julia laughs, standing and stretching. Taako glares at her. No one notices Magnus throw down a three of hearts.

“He’s not a _twink_.” Kravitz says with fake indignance, placing a hand on the small of Taako’s back. 

Taako shoots him a glare that makes him laugh. “You’re not helping.” 

“Taako, it’s okay.” Magnus speaks up, smiling at him and placing a comforting hand on his arm. “ _I_  can tell you’re a hunk.”

“I hate this whole entire family. Don’t touch me.”

“Hey, how do we feel about some background noise?” Julia suddenly calls from the other side of the room, bent in front of her record player. “We’ll forget all about how I just gave Taako the Queen!”

“ _Unlikely_.” Taako hisses, sitting back down next to Kravitz and leaning on him.

“Aww, Taako, to be fair--”

“Magnus, _don’t even_ \--”

“I’m sure if you were playing with anyone else, you would have won!”

“Kravitz, take me home. _Now_.”

Kravitz doesn’t do that. He turns and kisses Taako on the cheek, because that makes Taako fume and his ears turn bright pink.

Kravitz also freezes when a familiar pattern-- piano notes, rapidly running up and down-- rings in the air.

“Oh, shit, wrong one.” Julia mumbles, then turns her head to them with a mischievous smile. “Unless one of you boys knows swing?”

“Swing?” Taako asks, eyes on his nails. “The fuck is swing?”

Kravitz feels his head spin.

He _remembers_  this. This particular song-- he particular night he first heard it, the first time he took a ladies’ hand and swung her around to it. He remembers her name, her perfume, his shirt, his shoes, the sound of his laugh, so distant and far away.

He remembers the song.

He remembers the _dance_.

“Julia? You swing?” Kravitz asks, and he’s… he’s _excited_.

“Really, old man? _You_  swing?” She stands and a smile splits her face.

With an open palm, she holds out her hand.

Kravitz stands and, for the first time in _centuries_ , dances.

It’s not even rusty-- there’s no stiffness to his bones, there’s no sweat on his back, there’s no forgotten moves. When he takes her hand and they start he’s _alive_  again-- he’s young, he’s got a beating heart in his chest, he’s a laughing man with a bottle of gin.

He moves with Julia across the room and soon Magnus and Taako are clapping to the beat, encouraging them on, and it’s like he’s really back in the saloon he _lived_  in. Dancing with a lady, her skirt billowing around them as he dips and kicks with her, moving his body like he hasn’t in _centuries_.

He doesn’t hold back. His taps turn into kicks, his pressures turn into orchestrated _moves_. 

Kravitz smiles. Then he _laughs_.

He grins at her with the old grin of a man long dead, a man that laughs like a boy and dances like one, too. He winks and spins her like his mother will yell at him if he ain’t home in ten minutes. 

Julia is the perfect partner-- she twirls and her skirt surrounds them, encases them, brushes past his face as she kicks and swirls. She steps with quick, electric steps that lead him and compliment him and she laughs with her tongue between her teeth, her eyes squinted shut with her smile.

It’s the most animated he’s been since he died. When the song ends, quick as it began, he’s _sweating_.

Taako and Magnus start applauding and Kravitz doesn’t know what to do so he just laughs, dipping Julia one last time. She’s equally as breathless but she looks up at him with a newfound electricity, a new energy, and Kravitz thinks that if he ever needs to dance, he’ll go to her.

“Well this ain’t _your_  first rodeo, is it?” 

Kravitz straightens her and he doesn’t even know why but he’s _smiling_ ,  grinning like some sort of fool. There’s a hollow space in his chest and it’s magnified-- something should be beating there, quick as can be.

“I, um, used to dance.” 

Julia smiles up at him and her eyes dart to the couch before she crosses her arms. Another song starts playing-- just as quick as the last-- and the euphoria  _doesn’t fade_. “What say we give these young bloods a lesson, eh?”

Kravitz turns and looks at Magnus and Taako, having quite forgotten they were there.

Magnus stands, immediately moving towards Julia with a smile wide on his face. “What an honor!” He says, sounding completely awestruck, and Julia laughs again and latches onto him.

Taako’s standing, but he’s not smiling.

“Taako?”

Taako’s staring at him in complete and utter wonder, stone still, and Kravitz touches his own face-- has he shifted forms? Is there something wrong? Did something happen?

“S-Sorry--” Taako blinks and stutters and in the next second his lips are pressed against Kravitz’s, quick but not without force. When he leans back Kravitz feels himself lean forward, barely noticeable, because when he was younger he had to _chase_  to get kisses like that. “Sorry, I’m just-- I'm  _really_  in love with you.”

Kravitz finds himself grinning-- all teeth, all hunger. “Understandable.”

It’s not him to say that. Hasn’t been him for a while. 

But today he feels like it is.

Today Kravitz feels like dancing.

So he does.

Taako isn’t as skilled as Julia is-- he doesn’t quite know where to put his feet and he mostly just ends up kicking and twirling where Kravitz throws him. Kravitz takes the lead-- he dips Taako and throws him into a spin and Taako is his to play with, his to breathe life into.

He’s had practice-- tourists or travellers that come into town, there at the local saloon for a good night of fun, were always his to dance with. He’d dance with them and they’d step on his shoes or bump into him but it was always in good fun.

Of course, it’s never been like this.

No one’s looked at him with this love in their eyes, excitement and surprise and laughter. 

When the dancing stops and the music ends, he thinks to himself that he’s never kissed someone like _this_.

His hair falls around Taako’s face and curtains them as, with precision he’s unaware of, he sweeps Taako into a dip and kisses him, full of _life_  and love and hot, hot breath.


End file.
